96% of CSPs surveyed suffer operational or financial impacts from misaligned data
Ontology Systems' CEO, Benedict Enweani
London, UK. May 26, 2010 — Data 'misalignment' has long been recognised as a chronic problem for communication service providers (CSPs) running large OSS/BSS infrastructures. Now, research carried out last month by Telesperience, the independent telecom and IT analysts, on behalf of Ontology Systems, has revealed just how widespread a problem it is and how difficult it is to solve.
Data misalignment can be defined as, “A situation where software solutions either cannot get the data they need when they need it, or cannot rely on the data being accurate, both of which affect the solution's performance”.
According to Ontology Systems, the highlights of the new research are:
- Data misalignment kills CSP efficiency.
- 96% of CSPs surveyed suffer operational or financial impacts from misaligned data
- Customer experience and service management suffer.
- 75% find that data misalignment damages their customers' experience
- Revenue leaks are a direct result.
- 75% need to align their data to improve billing accuracy
Most significantly, 0% of the 24 CSPs surveyed have solved the data misalignment problem: A total of 42% say it is too expensive, and over 50% say it is too complex and they can't find effective tools.
Teresa Cottam, Research and Publications Director at Telesperience who carried out the research comments: “The overwhelming message from the research was that CSPs told us solving data misalignment would help them tackle their key revenue management, service management and customer experience goals, yet no CSP in the sample had solved the data misalignment problem citing cost and lack of available tools as the main barriers.”
The research also revealed the following data misalignment trends:
- 96% of respondents said they suffer operational or financial impacts resulting from data misalignment
- 75% said data misalignment damages customer experience
- 75% said it prevents or delays full automation
- 63% said it drives up customer complaints
- 96% said solving the problem would have a positive impact on their customers
- 58% said they are continually trying to fix it…
- …yet no CSP in the sample has solved the problem to date, with:
- 58% saying it is too complex a problem
- 54% saying tools they have tried aren’t effective
- 42% saying it is too expensive, and
- 37% saying they spend more than US$500,000 on tackling it
Cottam also notes: “The extent and impact of data misalignment upon CSPs' business was worryingly high, with 96% of respondents saying they did suffer either operational or commercial impacts from poorly aligned data.” Cottam continues: “Interestingly, those spending the most on fixing data misalignment were not the biggest CSPs, but instead those with one to 10 million subscribers who accounted for 56% of those spending more than US$500,000.”
Benedict Enweani, Ontology’s CEO, comments: “The research highlights the scale and size of the problems caused by misaligned data and the challenges that CSPs face trying to unleash the value in their OSS/BSS data.” Enweani adds: “From the 'get go', we knew that traditional tools and approaches would be costly to deploy and ultimately have very little impact. For this very reason, when we developed OSS/CAD, we turned to the field of semantics and ontologies as the only cost-effective and capable method of tackling data misalignment in complex systems such as OSS/BSS.”
Enweani concludes: “Today, experience with our customers who use OSS/CAD’s semantic engine to fix data misalignment and tackle OSS/BSS complexity, shows that they are able to align data and keep it aligned, stop revenue leaks and find stranded assets, manage services with confidence, and accelerate and unblock failing transformations. They are managing it with unprecedented speed and, according to the results of the survey, at a fraction of the cost of other CSPs.”
